Gavin Mueller’s recent article for the boundary 2 online journal, “Digital Proudhonism” is a Marxist critique of what Mueller describes as “Digital Proudhonism,” a catchall term for those who believe that technology is lowering class barriers. Digital Proudhonism is not a formal ideology but rather an undercurrent expressed by a variety of individuals from all…

Uber, the controversial corporate employer masquerading as a “ride-sharing” service, has recently stirred up more controversy with new revelations about its Greyball program for circumventing enforcement of local taxicab monopolies. Greyball maintains a database of likely local government officials. This database is populated by users who frequently open and close the Uber app near government buildings,…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. In 2008, we heard a lot of stuff from Obama about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping and Gitmo; and then in January 2009 Obama turned on a dime and enacted George Bush’s third term on such issues….

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “‘Intellectual Property’ Kills’” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. The key agenda at the center of all the so-called “free trade agreements” is the imposition, at the behest of the giant corporations that depend on “intellectual property” monopolies for their profits, of a form of protectionism…

On June 22nd pop mega-star Taylor Swift, released an open letter to Apple Music, refusing to grant the company’s new music streaming service access to her newest album. Her letter was a response to Apple’s policy of not paying musicians whose work is listened to, by customers during their three month, free trial of Apple’s…

On May 25th a lawyer of Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij told a Swedish newspaper his client seeks to appeal the recent Stockholm District Court ruling which granted the Swedish government control over the company’s domain names “piratebay.se” and “thepiratebay.se”. For those who do not know, The Pirate Bay facilitates the online sharing of data…

Every time I read a column by John Stossel, I think my estimation of him has fallen to its theoretical limit. And then I read the next one. For years, Stossel has tipped his hat to the idea that “pro-market” and “pro-business” are not the same thing. He occasionally gives an example of welfare for…

In an April 24 speech, new “Intellectual Property” Czar Danny Marti confessed that the whole point of federal IP policy is to inflate nominal GDP and corporate profits by maximizing what monopolists are able to charge for stuff. He didn’t mean to state it that baldly, of course. But that’s what it amounts to —…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “How “Intellectual Property” Impedes Competition” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Kevin Carson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. Since intellectual property is not necessary to encourage innovation, this means that its main practical effect is to cause economic inefficiency by levying a monopoly charge on the use of existing…

Right now the usual suspects are united in joy by Hillary Clinton’s official announcement of her candidacy for president (although anyone who seriously believed she was previously undecided on the issue probably also still believes in Santa Claus). By “usual suspects,” I mean self-styled “progressives” who think the Red/Blue divide reflects a serious disagreement in…

The New York Times revealed April 7 (Bernice Dahn, “Yes, We Were Warned About Ebola“) that there was adequate prior warning of an Ebola outbreak in Liberia, but nobody drew the proper conclusion from the data and acted on it because the necessary information was all hidden behind academic journal paywalls. An article in Annals…

These three short stories all come from the same Cory Doctorow collection, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2007). Free download here. The three are all set against a background of what I call the “DRM Curtain,” a transnational corporate Empire based on artificial scarcities enforced through a maximalist version “intellectual…

On January 20, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced the Apollo 1201 project, an effort to eradicate digital rights management (DRM) schemes from the world of Internet commerce. Led by well-known activist Cory Doctorow, the project aims to “accelerate the movement to repeal laws protecting DRM” and “kick-start a vibrant market in viable, legal alternatives to…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “The State as Stay Puft Marshmallow Man” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Sometimes the capitalist state’s internal rules and procedures, created to serve an economic ruling class, in specific cases wind up sabotaging the very interests they were created to serve. Much like the Catholic doctrine of concupiscence…

A persistent theme in popular culture, when it comes to issues of technological progress and the future, is that the super-rich will be the main beneficiaries of new technology. Billionaires with artificially augmented lifespans will retreat into their gated communities and anarcho-capitalist enclaves; the rest of us will live lives nasty, brutish and short, subject…